In just a few years of cross-industry entrepreneurship, "YIN Yin" has grown from a studio with only two and a half people at the beginning to become the top 10 K gold category in the Tmall industry and a new jewelry brand with 3 independent offline stores.
Under the epidemic situation, the first half of 2020 will maintain a nearly 100% growth, and 618 will deliver a report card of 300% of last year's sales!
How did YIN break a bloody path in the jewelry market? With this question, New Consumption Internal Reference interviewed one of YIN's founders-Aryu Wuying.
01
Make extremely differentiated products to give users more sense of value
Speaking of the original intention of starting a business, Aryu bluntly said that it was because "it is indisputable."
China's jewelry consumer market in 2019 is about 700 billion, accounting for 33% of the world's scale, with a CAGR of 12.1% in the past ten years.
In the past dozens or even hundreds of years, old gold has mostly played the role of luxury, wealth or hard currency. But now, as an accessory, it has almost been labeled as'old' and'earth'.
Among the mainstream domestic brands in the gold jewelry category, there are almost no products that meet the aesthetic needs of the younger generation. In addition, these original products are usually expensive, unbearable for ordinary users, and consumption frequency is extremely low.
"YIN Yin" was established in 2014. Before that, the two founders, Wu Yin and Yin He, were working together at Ogilvy. Because of their work relationship, they had a lot of experience in dealing with various brands and traveling overseas.
The two deeply analyzed the pain points faced by the jewelry accessories industry: Although there are many choices of jewelry accessories on the market, gold jewelry that combines durability and plasticity, whether domestic or foreign, is rarely suitable for the consumption and aesthetics of contemporary white-collar workers. Brand.
At that time, the two put forward the concept of "designing gold ornaments" and set up a studio with the goal of making differentiated products.
The differences they say are mainly reflected in three levels:
1) Design differences
YIN hopes to break the heavy and eye-catching stereotype of gold jewellery through innovative brand concepts and design concepts.
YIN's brand Slogan is "gold or hidden", which reflects the brand's design concept-minimalism, low-key, abstract, not chasing trends, and paying more attention to the comfort of the user's skin.
2) User differences
The users of old gold jewelry are distributed in a wide range of age groups, ranging from long-life locks for babies, to gifts for weddings, and jewelry for the elderly.
Different from the user group that industry giants focus on, YIN's main target group is white-collar workers aged 25-35. The scene is accessories that can be used for work and daily collocation.
Although the established brands have begun to formulate strategies for the young market in recent years, it is also a major challenge for the giants to change the brand's label in the short term.
3) Pricing differences
Gold is used as decorative jewelry, and its users are mostly middle-class women who can afford to pay. YIN sets the average customer unit price at around 3,000 yuan, which reduces the user's purchase threshold and decision-making difficulty, and makes it easier to generate reasonable repurchase. At the same time, it can be differentiated in price from mature brands such as Cartier and Chow Tai Fook.
Thanks to their previous work experience, Wu Ying and Yin He have served many international brands and have accumulated rich experience in brand planning. In addition to the clear demands for products, YIN's brand concept was relatively complete when the first product was born, ranging from brand positioning to the extensibility of series themes.
Although the initial loyalty of entrepreneurship comes from the pursuit of beautiful things, it never forgets the reality of business, laying a good foundation for the development of the brand.
02
A clear user portrait is an important prerequisite for a good product
Affected by the continuous increase in per capita disposable income, the scale of China's jewelry consumer market is expected to reach 1.4 trillion in 2024, with a steady growth rate. Gold products are still the most important consumer category in the jewelry industry, accounting for about 52.1%.
The top gold jewellery brands represented by Chow Tai Fook and Lao Fengxiang each have a market share of less than 7%. According to statistics, the number of jewelry stores nationwide is as many as 63,000, and the overall industry concentration is low.
At the same time, the per capita consumption of jewelry in China is less than 1/7 of that of the United States. There is still room for improvement in terms of consumer penetration and per capita consumption. With the rise of more people with purchasing power, and companies’ exposure to various market segments With the increase in development power, the market is far from reaching the ceiling.
In the past, the customer acquisition channel was single, and offline was the absolute mainstream. Some shops were gathered in the form of jewelry city, and the other part was evenly distributed in supermarkets and streets and alleys according to the consumption characteristics of the location. The competition pattern was relatively stable.
However, with the advent of the mobile era, the form of traffic distribution has undergone drastic changes, which provides space for new brands and new models.
YIN chose the online DTC model at the early stage of its development, allowing brands and users to form a direct interaction without going through distributors, thus creating a more ideal user stickiness.
Aryu told us: “A core user can refer more than a hundred new users, and loyal users have repurchased every year for 5 years. From the souvenirs for the first time in the workplace to the souvenirs for the second child, many users from the studio stage It is still active now, and the average per customer price of old customers is three times that of new users."
Today, jewelry is still one of the categories with the lowest online penetration rate.
E-commerce platforms have flourished for more than a decade, and the proportion of online jewelry transactions is less than 20%. In 2015, the penetration rate of online jewelry transactions was even less than 1%.
2014-2018 is the initial stage of YIN's brand development and the fastest compound growth in the penetration rate of the entire online jewelry transaction. The convenience of channels provides a nourishing soil for new brands like YIN. Since upgrading to the Tmall store in 2017, YIN has achieved the Top 10 category in just three years.
Among the dividends of the industry, the rational product design of the brand and the clear positioning of users have allowed the growth to reach a stable level.
The driving force of consumers to purchase is also changing with the times. More people will be willing to pay for value recognition, and the labels of consumers will become richer and more diverse, so that the groups are more subdivided and have more distinctive characteristics.
YIN’s user portraits can be described abstractly as "a group whose consumption power and aesthetic power are awakening", and subdivided into four major categories of representative groups:
One is the group that YǐN hopes to face directly when planning the brand in the initial stage, that is, 25-35 years old women in the workplace who have a certain material and aesthetic pursuit of daily jewelry;
The second is young people aged 18 to 24. They live in an era of richer material. They want to buy better and more expensive things earlier than the previous generation, they are more knowledgeable, and they are not so obsessed with foreign brands. This group of people is more willing to buy for emotional identification and personality aesthetics;
Third, consumers of old gold will start to actively look for new Chinese design brands and products with more artistic and aesthetic feelings when the SKU is more abundant;
The fourth is luxury goods consumers. These consumers usually have a strong aesthetic and purchasing power, and their attention is beginning to tilt towards more frequent products. At the same time, they do not want to be the same, but want to buy more that reflects their aesthetic personality. Ornaments.
Aryu pointed out: “Although our core user portraits are these people, there are many people who want to become this portrait. We can clearly feel the needs of users. Gold jewelry is not a niche business, a niche. Therefore, we hope to strive to be a little bit ahead in all aspects in terms of design, positioning, and pricing that are acceptable to the public."
03
Design concept: convey cultural self-confidence through design
In recent years, there has been no shortage of new design brands, but many quickly fell into silence. To be a commercial brand requires sufficient concentration. From designer to brand, the gap in between is the understanding and interpretation of business.
Aryu explained to us, “China does not lack expressive designers today, but to integrate products into brands, it is more necessary to restrain curiosity and restrain the desire to express than to create.”
YǐN currently has 26 series of designs. The main series are "Hidden" Mobius ring, "One" Tai Chi, and "Ying" moon. Most of the inspiration comes from abstract symbols such as the universe, science, and nature. They have the same points. It is malleability and a long life cycle design concept.
For example, the Mobius ring, which itself can represent an infinite loop. There is also the golden section series, interpreted with a perfect ratio of 1.618. Find the rational internal cause behind the perceptual beauty, and present abstract symbols in a concrete way through design.
In the original traditional impression, gold usually represents wealth and status. The dream scene about jewelry is always inseparable from European royal origins. YIN hopes to break this fixed ideographic context and find an interpretation that is more in line with the oriental temperament, modern spirit, and the introverted character of the brand.
The principle of the design is to meet the user's underlying needs, including from the perspective of aesthetics and practicality. After determining the theme of the series, the design of the product will be carried out through a systematic process to ensure the satisfaction of the final product. This includes selection of product categories, series pricing, designer finalization, mold opening with partner factories, and so on. After the sample has been polished through strict requirements, a series of tests including comfort are required.
The design of a single product is inevitably plagiarized, but the construction of the design system is a unique barrier for the brand.
At the beginning of this year, YIN was recognized by the capital market and received 5 million angel round financing from Fengqiao Capital. With the blessing of capital, YIN has opened 3 offline stores so far. They are the first boutique store with the theme of "The Space-Time Art Museum in the Cloud" in Wangfu Central, Beijing, and recently in Shanghai Ganghui Henglong and Shenzhen Bay Mixc Separately opened themed stores of "Exquisite Geometry Palace" and "Elegant Golden House in the Book".
Offline retail stores will serve as another form of YIN's work and experience space to reach consumers, thereby establishing a more complete brand perception.
YIN also selects 2-4 partners for joint names each year, including new consumer lifestyle brands, domestic products, humanities and arts, youth culture IP joint cross-border, etc. These include the Yong and Love Golden Gloves co-branded with 24KiCK, the Tai Chi Gossip Five Elements Oracle Bone Inscriptions bracelet co-branded with the National Library, and the "Hot Heart Guitar Pick Necklace" launched with the recent hot summer of the Joyside Band.
Finally, when talking about brand-level ambitions, Aryu said: “What we want to do is not the superficial national trend. Inspiration can come from all over the world. Even if it is the same theme, YIN can make its own products. We are actually looking at the world from an oriental perspective and Chinese taste, so we also hope to make a brand that can represent the voice of China."
